


Winter’s Eye

by webcricket



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Caretaking, F/M, Love, Origin Story, Protectiveness, Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2020-10-12 18:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20568584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/webcricket/pseuds/webcricket
Summary: Season 13 canon tells you AU!Castiel’s story ends bitterly at the end of his mirror’s blade - this is how his story begins. The deranged and damaged iteration of Castiel we met in the apocalypse universe - an obedient soldier to Michael’s cause barely in control of his vessel’s frayed and erratically firing nerves whose inherent kindness toward humankind appeared entirely obliterated - wasn’t always an unfeeling angelic weapon of interrogation. Once, he sympathized with the plight of humans; one, he loved so deeply he would sacrifice the very essence of who he is to save her.





	1. I

Stillness, an eerie shroud of silence, and new-fallen snow blanket the surrounding forest in a solid sea of white as far as the hindrance of heavily moisture-laden flakes - floating so slowly downward to rest upon the scorched earth as to seem to swath a sparkling curtain across the grayly apocalypse- lit sky - allow perception to penetrate. The purity of this storm subdues the smolder of destruction resulting from another - that of the end of humanity. In the all out fratricide between Lucifer and Michael, then the further lust of the latter victorious archangel for power in the absence of God’s guidance or intervention, what wasn’t destroyed in felling the devil for the final time, survived only to burn: A divinely wrought and prophesied Hell on Earth. 

The silhouette of a soldier, squarely plodding an unseen path through the white-wash wilderness with black-gloved hands shoved deep in the pockets of a dark woolen overcoat, pierces the blizzard’s veil; ice crystals mantle the thick hood of lashes shielding eyes that shine in bright blue defiance of the colorless landscape.

Castiel cares little for the bitter wind blasting the handsomely hewn countenance he wears. Howl mournfully lamenting the fate of the world as it careens through the leafless canopy of trees to hurl up frigid walls in every direction of his stiffly-gaited step, the incorporeally frozen blockades of breeze bite at his vessel’s stubble and frost coated cheeks; the relentless buffeting tints the exposed tanned expanse of skin with a pale wash of pink. Like the beige military uniform stretching broad shoulders, the body is borrowed - a prison for the celestial being entrenched within fighting his own battle.

The angel’s focus lies inward; he ruminates over the reasons for his exile - banished with wings clipped as punishment to walk these woods for openly sympathizing with humans, for defying Michael’s orders to murder them en masse, and for inciting rebellion amongst his brethren by daring to question the righteousness of his brother’s actions toward their Father’s favored children when they were supposed to be their protectors.

Castiel - too much heart, crack in his chassis, loyal to the last to his Creator’s purpose - led his garrison, and others who would join him in the early chaos, against Michael’s uprising army; the defeat against such a foe who held the high ground of Heaven’s gate as its first son was as swift as it was absolute; but Castiel hoped the stand itself would plant a seed - would nurture the idea in his kin that they have a choice, that they can wield free will and direct fate to right an immense wrong just as readily as a blade. _Shepherds_ do not slaughter _sheep_.

_Angels_, however, have a fatalistic tendency to be drawn like moths to flame, blinded by demonstrations of raw power; power, which on Michael’s side reigned supreme over a stolid soldier’s mere words championing them to keep their faith.

Michael considered death - the eternal Empty sleep promised to Heaven’s kind - too peaceful a punishment for the sort of disloyalty exhibited by the likes of Castiel. Wiping out the entirety of Castiel’s garrison one by one with a snap of his fingers, forcing the angel to watch each of his brothers and sisters expire in a smote of swirling dust, and knowing _he_ was the direct cause of their demise, Michael left the broken being alive to serve as an example to others harboring disloyal intent, and more so to let the angel who claimed to feel dwell painfully in personal doubt and guilt over the nature of his defeat.

Castiel might not notice the coolness of the air, yet he nonetheless feels numbed to the celestial core of his being.

You ceased to pay any concern to the cold a very few minutes ago, too, albeit for a different reason. Warmth - nay, intense tingling heat - sparked in your fingertips and gradually spread to your frozen limbs compelling you after a time to drop the damp kindling which you were trying unsuccessfully to coax into a fire by sheer will and friction. 

Roving angels seeing signs of surviving human life be damned, an impromptu swim in a not as frozen as it looked river and losing all your supplies as you made your way to a supposed encampment of refugees at the forest’s edge had forced your hand.

Ceding consciousness over to the pervasive soothing seep of warmth, mind too lulled by the temptation of sleep to question the fact it’s physically impossible to get warm in the midst of a blizzard when your clothes are soaked and wicking what remains of your body heat and life away, you sink sideways onto a bed of snow.

It’s there, lying beneath a bare branched oak on the bank of the river, palm upright inches from a pile of branches indicating you endeavored to start a fire, a final flutter of breath and a stubborn beat or two of the heart away from forfeiting your life to the storm, Castiel finds your figure slumped, snow-covered, and at the precipice of perpetual quietude.

The unexpected sight, the first sign of anything living besides himself - a situation that bears a likeness better akin to existing, rather than living - he has seen in months abruptly surfaces him from his darker thoughts of self- loathing.

A test, he suspects; squinting homeward, snowflakes spatter and melt upon the furrow of his upturned brow. Strings of protective instinct thread through his heart, tie into knots, pull taut on the organ, and tighten his chest until it threatens to burst. Even if this is a test, he knows he doesn’t belong there anymore; and he knows he doesn’t want to belong there if being an angel means destruction.

His gaze drops to you; he has nothing left to lose. You, you _do_.

Moving to crouch beside you, he peers closely into your pallid features. A subtle smile twitches your mouth as some pleasant memory ferries you toward oblivion; another second passes as he stares and relaxation floods your features. He removes the glove hugging his right hand and reaches out. Grasping the top of your shoulder, he rolls you onto your back; your water- logged clothing crackles - an icy sheet beneath his gentle grip. Shifting his touch to your forehead, he closes his eyes and sacrifices enough of his limited reserves of grace to keep your soul from shuffling off its mortal coil.

There’s shelter nearby, a place he goes when the monotony of wandering through these woods wears on him. He lifts you without effort; cradling you carefully, he sets off for the cabin. A sense of purpose and haste lengthen his stride.

For the moment, his sole thought lingers in the realm of awe for the tenacity of humans toward survival. Even in bleakness, in the face of no certain future, no possible stability, alone, and with nothing except the clothes on your back, you tried to create a light by which to survive. _Hope_ lives.


	2. II

Illumined by a flickering glow, frost curtains the corners of the cabin’s paned windows as sheets of snow continue to envelope the world without. A fire crackles in the wood stove; the cast iron door yawns to reveal a burning bedlam of deep orange and silvery embers forfeiting their fervor of warmth to temper the chill from the single room. 

The fury of light silhouettes two figures stationed directly before it; the one, insensate with cold and settled on an overstuffed leather chair, houses a soul lately saved, the other, operating on righteous instinct, a being in a body borrowed. 

The latter leans in constant worried motion over his unconscious ward. He loosens the layers of damp clothing, consigning a coat no longer equipped in its damp state to insulate to the floor beside already discarded boots; the melt of caked-snow clinging to the laces and heels coalesces into a shimmering pool on the broad pine planks. 

Still dissatisfied by the sluggish return of consciousness, he rubs and rearranges the lax limbs repeatedly to restore circulation. His unrelenting efforts find rapid reward in a spasm of shuttered eyelid and the initiation of a bodily shiver suggesting the brain of the afflicted has thawed enough to rejoin the struggle for survival. 

Tapping a finger to the rewarmed temple, his irises refract an internally rising radiance of blue; the otherwise unseen glory gifted him by heaven hurries to confirm the signs of recovery. Evidently pacified with the direction of progress given the small sigh of relief passing his lips, he ceases fussing to slide the chair in closer proximity to the blaze; stoking and feeding the fire, he steps back, content for the moment to watch the unfolding symptoms of revival. 

The breath of both flame and rekindling life further thicken the frosty condensation on the window’s glass from within as he waits.

Castiel’s concerned blues occasion, after some minutes observing the sameness of your state, to lift from you in order to sweep over the shadow-obscured stacked log walls; in them and, too, a roof sound enough to keep out the blasting wind, he notes something of greater consequence than he felt hereto before when tarrying there - something consoling; a something verging on _comfort_. 

The only variable altered is that of his not being alone – an amendment to his exile he finds not at all unpleasant; and one which - as regards comfort at least - watery sheen of blues dipping again to you, he wonders whether you will feel equal easement in upon waking.

In the firelight your features flush as blood steadily surges to sooth ice-nipped skin; he is struck once again by the delicacy of peace predominant in your expression despite the subtleties of pain weathering pale pink lips and stamping a sallowness into the hollows beneath your lowered lashes. The natural advantage of beauty he appreciates as affecting your particular aspect, much like those wonders of his Father’s creation once resplendent in a now desolated world for which he held the highest esteem allowed an angelic creature supposedly steeped in inherent apathy, appears no less diminished given what you must have endured before stumbling into these woods.

A series of restless moans murmuring on your lips, you squirm in shallow slumber in search of some unknown solace which seems to elude you.

Trance broken, giving you space, instinctively he shifts backward and stills to stone. He hasn’t yet considered what he’ll say – hasn’t fully fathomed how to handle the consequence of confusion sure to follow fast upon your rousing, nor how to allay the fear certain to be aroused in the requisite explanations offered of how you came to be here and what he is. 

A compassionate heart guided by an innate sense for what is right, and the selfish potential - in the soldierly sense, of course, of once more having order and purpose to the passage of time - for the immediate improvement of his own dejected condition to be provided by your company, fix him to the spot.

A moment passes; then another. You do not wake.

A spark of cinder bursts forth, bounces, and sputters in the drips of wet gathered round your socked feet; his notice veers from you to follow the extinguishing complaints of the slag until it is no more than a fleck of gray ash and a withering of smoke.

“Hi.” Your throat, raw from long exposure to cold air, cracks out the faintest of greetings.

Blues flick to meet your blearily blinking gaze. Caught off guard, he states the obvious. “You’re awake.”

“No, I’m _Y/N_.” Woozy, weak, and uncertain of where you are or who he is, you default to wit such that you might start by assembling the strewn vestiges of it now returning to you.

His gaze narrows; after a second of deeply furrowed contemplation of your curious response to his observation, the crease of his brow eases in realization of the verbal play. “Ah, I’m Castiel.”

Stranger with a strange name, you think, and, a _stranger_ accent. 

Straightening from a slouch to obtain a better vantage on your whereabouts, half-expecting some indication to present itself you’ve been transported to Europe, you chance a cursory glance at the surroundings; your best guess: You’ve simply been deposited in a hunting cabin replete with a requisite decapitated White-tailed deer – a vacantly staring specimen sans four legs and anything else below the neck - mounted on a plaque to one wall. Despite the deer’s dead stare, it’s better than the last place you remember being which is riverside freezing to death under the similarly impassive survey of an oak. 

In your periphery, a well-aimed lurch of two, maybe two and half feet from the cozy confines of the chair, your eyes glint on a brass fire poker laid against the stove. You have no idea who this guy is; not that you aren’t grateful, but you’re keeping your options open.

“Castiel,” you repeat, regard roaming over his distinctly regimental attire and the squared stance ingrained by association as that of a soldier standing at attention. “I think I owe you a thank you.” 

Dropping his gaze in a gallant gesture of humility suggesting saving you was a mere trifle, he bows his head.

The civility of his manner instantly eases your wariness. In its place, you feel the overwhelming urge to fill the silence and elucidate how you came to be in the predicament of wanting rescue. “Damned stupid to dare that river crossing in a storm. I could hear the ice cracking, but I also heard a squad of angels coming in close behind me. Not much of a choice, you know?”

His eyes rise to yours – you discern the tranquility of their color markedly disturbed by the mention of angels. This reaction fortifies your impression of him as friend, not foe. Slightly relaxing caution, you lean forward to fold your palms together before stove.

The strong line of his jaw sets, stalling in choice of just the right words to answer to your story without creating alarm. Coughing to clear the gravel from the lower register of his voice, he calmly utters them a second or two before you become aware of the delay. “There are no angels on _that_ side of the river.” In review, it occurs to him it would’ve been wiser not to stress any one part of the statement above another.

“Oh.” You swallow the syllable; embarrassment blossoms on your cheeks as the enormity of the _damned stupid_ sinks in and the reality of the _damned lucky_ surfaces. 

You duck your chin and redirect, hoping perhaps along with his knowledge of where angels _aren’t_, he also knows something of the refugee encampment you were looking for. “Are you with the resistance?” 

The disquiet unsettling his blues and agitating the minute musculature of his jawline wends down his spine to work inflexible mischief into his shoulders. He’s glad you failed to latch onto the ill-spoken _that_, less glad the interview persists in being directed upon himself. 

Unpracticed talking to people – skills of conversing rusty as a result of many months of isolation – he grapples inwardly to determine how to change the subject; outwardly, he clasps his hands behind his back to preserve composure. 

Evading causing you discomfiture by further delay in speaking, he replies, “In a manner of speaking.” 

Although superficially affirmative, the awkward avoidance of an explicatory answer should excite your alertness; it doesn’t. The strangely alluring accent he’s in possession of implies he’s a visitor from foreign lands; wherever he’s from, perhaps the resistance is called something entirely different, like, for example, the _opposition_. 

The cohesive framework of international news, or news of any shape beyond word of mouth and unfounded rumor (which, strictly speaking, is not so different from when international news stood strong), ceased to exist the day angels dive-bombed the planet. Whomever he’s with, his answer signifies a sympathetic attachment to the resistance, and that’s good enough for you.

“You’re military then?” you ask, utterly naïve in your progress toward the horrifying truth. 

“Yes.” 

If angels prayed, he’d pray - for _your_ sake - you end your inquiry there. You were willing to risk hypothermia or worse to escape angels you only imagined were trailing you; there’s no guessing what you’ll do when you discover yourself occupying a room with one. 

Short of hastily vacating the cabin without any clear rationalization of why he is running out into a squall, he’s at a total loss as to how to stop you; he ignores the gust of wind just then temptingly rattling the door.

Surrendering to the security represented in his confirmed status as a soldier – whereby, in so far as you understand, a soldier universally being a shield to defend against wrong, thus makes him worthy of your confidence – and suddenly aware of a recommenced shivering as the strength of the fire wanes, you stretch your fingers toward a blanket draped out of reach on a footstool. 

Casually – _fatally_, to your carelessly formed faith in his goodness given the little you know - you prod further. “So … what army?”

He stoops to retrieve the blanket for you and encounters, in a separation of only inches, your unsuspecting and thankful look as you offer him a diminutive but delightful smile in exchange for the chivalrously proffered fringed edge of fabric.

You peer expectantly into his blues, ready to learn which leg of European power has crossed the sea to help stand humanity’s ground here in the states; peering back at you, veracity gleams brightly beneath a widened ledge of lashes begging pardon for what he is about to say. 

Your rapt attention diverts to his lips moving in articulation of an answer that steals your breath and stops your heart.

“_God’s_ army.”


	3. III

_God’s army._

The sinister timbre of his words seem to reverberate off the lofted ceiling, concussing you not once, but rattling the very foundations of your soul in their implication.

This scourge of humanity is suspended so near, his fist yet attached to the blanket slipped from a grasp no longer possessing the power of gratitude, you readily perceive your unfolding terror – mouth aghast - reflected in his lustrous blue gaze.

An involuntary gasp of terror jams at your vocal chords where it combats briefly with, and concedes to, a growing need for oxygen; reduced to a gurgling, white-eyed, and flail-limbed human helix of fear, you recoil, springing backward over the chair cushion, hurtling over it and putting the plush - albeit sturdily built - piece of furniture between you and the source of your panic. Reason tells you even a fine example of upholstery such as this will not impede the will of heavenly wrath. You snatch sideways at the fire poker and clutch it to your chest; it, too, fails to reassure you.

Excepting the steady lock of his stare following your ineffectual retreat, Castiel remains absolutely still.

His immobility fortifies your nerves enough to render you able to vocalize your distress. “An angel!” you hiss, peering over the chair and aiming the pointy end of the brass instrument at those indomitably fixed blues. “You’re an _angel_!”

The accusation laden in your naming of him – _angel_, and in a voice sharpened by vitriol lumping him together with his kin, as if all angels were evil incarnate – wounds him more than the threat of the poker which, not being an instrument of celestial forging, you both know is useless against a host of heaven.

“Yes-” He averts his eyes, would blush in shame if a sense of humiliation flourished naturally amid angels – “I’m an angel.” He knows no apology suitable to make amends for _what_ he is; given your aversion, he doesn’t suppose it much matters to you the distinction of _who_.

Emboldened by his avoidance, unable to think of any possible cause for an angel showing compassion to a human in an apocalypse of Heaven’s doing, let alone saving her life, you snap, “What do you want?”

Although instinct appeals to him to peer into your features, to seek whatever signs might exist there of fear giving way to consolation, he studies the stove in lieu of again looking at you. “Nothing.” Directing his answer to the dwindling fire within, he discerns cold creeping inward from the corners of the cabin as well as your furiously increased trembling not from fear, but from the menace of frosty air to a body so lately recovered from the brink of freezing.

“Nothing?” Derisive venom poisons your retort. “Nothing … _right_,” you snort. “I suppose you rescued me out of the goodness of your heart.”

It’s near enough the agonizing truth for him to vanquish his contemplation of the dying flames in favor of your face; pity, guilt, kindness – any of these sentiments would suffice to justify his saving you and would be easier to admit than the love for humanity that got him ostracized from the only home he’d ever known; all, indeed, out of the goodness of his heart and look at where _that_ got him.

Defensive, he eschews directly corroborating what was obviously meant, on your part, as a mockery of motive in order to determine your capacity to accept the prospect of its truth. “Is that so hard to believe?”

“It’s the freakin’ end of days for humanity and angels are our executioners, what do _you_ think I’m inclined believe?” Your eyes manage a mordant roll around their sockets without tearing away from careful watch of him. The only good angel you’ve ever come across is a dead angel; as far as you’re concerned _goodness_ and _life_ are mutually exclusive conditions when it comes to Heaven’s kind.

A flicker of divine fury alters his stoical regard at your affront. For a split second you swear you see the blackened shape of a massive pair of de-feathered wings shadow the wall behind a puffed posture of injured pride. You get the distinct impression you touched a particular nerve, although you have no idea what it means beyond being the reason for your recent salvation.

He modulates his tone with a calmness the impassioned intensity of his countenance betrays. “I did not save your soul from the icy grip of death in order to then turn around and orchestrate your demise.” In fact, he did not plan very far – at all, actually – beyond the bit about saving you.

You have to admit when he puts it like that, the logic is pretty sound. You don’t, however, have to admit it aloud. You do straighten up from your crouch and try, unsuccessfully, to shake the stiffness of cold from your limbs. “What are you then, some kind of guardian angel?”

The fire flings its final flame upward and the room dims in the unsteady illumination of smoldering embers that endures in its wake; it wants wood to produce the warmth you need, and your exasperating want of an explanation prevents him from getting it.

He sighs. “There’s no such thing as guardian angels. They’re a myth perpetuated by negligent parents to explain the luck of survival of their children when it was they, themselves, who should have been watching more carefully.”

“Then you can understand my skepticism here.” You cast him an archly challenging look; when he catches it, you eye the door askance, assaying him in silent regard for the answer as to whether or not you can leave any time you wish.

“You’re not _my_ prisoner.” Turning his back on you – _you_, standing there all shivering mortal bravado in damp clothes, poker in hand, unable to hold it steady, yet holding your own verbally in a sparring match of sass against an angel of the Lord – he marches for the door. Hand on the knob, he glances pointedly back at you over his shoulder as he retches it open and a gale, alive as it speckles the room in a glitter of snow, rushes inward.

You offer a shallow nod to indicate your understanding: It’s the blizzard that threatens; the blizzard that keeps you here, willing or no.

Satisfied of your staying put, at least until the storm passes, he plunges into the blustery night in search of timber.


	4. IV

Seven days and nights the blizzard raged.

Seven days and nights whose delineation blurred to human eyes peering out frosted glass into a stark apocalyptic light unchanging in its sunless snowy wind-swept diffusion; impatient, unnerved by your savior, however much nonthreatening space and silence he gave you in which to recuperate, you wondered when it would end - the storm, and everything else out there in the God-forsaken world making such a comparatively kind captivity preferable to a constant struggle to survive.

Condemned to wait for the weather to break within the protection afforded by the cabin’s gale-proof walls – shelter you couldn’t deny might be considered cozy were it not for the celestial company - the passage of days marked themselves in the clockwork comings and goings of Castiel. Naturally, in the interest of self-preservation - and with little else to engage a keen mind in entertainment - you noted his every nuance of action.

The angel mostly made himself scarce, slipping outside each morning without a word upon your rousing from sleep to resupply the wood stacked just inside the cabin’s door. Once the pile proved adequate enough in his estimation to ensure a day’s worth of fuel for the fire – the actual amount of tinder varying day to day and calculated by some equation unfathomable to you and yet unerringly correct to suit your need for warmth - he would risk a look in your direction to meet your guarded gaze.

Shine of snow melt upon his brow, a damp-glossed sweep of dark chestnut hair disheveled by the wind, the earnest unrest of a gaze in a form otherwise reserved in the rigidity of his stance shown an internal deliberation over desiring to say something but not desiring to cause you further distress or have his words sharpened by your tongue and used against him as you seemed wont to do.

He stared thus, deeper meaning inscrutable, for a strenuous stretch of seconds at the conclusion of his morning’s work as if beseeching you to be the one to end the muteness of an unsteady truce.

You let him stare, unspeaking in your returned scrutiny, until an emotion you would interpret in a human – or other such creatures born capable of _feeling_ \- as sorrow subdued the petitioning of his blues.

Obstinance drove a refusal to speak first no matter the sting to your compassion at seeing the pang of dejection drag his demeanor downward when a single syllable on your part would forestall the pain and allow for an explanation of his intent; you would not waste breath, not for an angel’s sake.

_And yet_, in a wearisome thump-thump accosting your ears, louder for the want of conversational company, your heartbeat unceasingly argued for the possibility of the impossible.

So thwarted, saying nothing, the melancholy tumble of his expression spoke for itself in those moments; he would turn to leave then, resuming that interminable walk of exile during which he ruminated upon his multitude of mistakes, rued the pride that led him to undertake the role of leader, nurtured his doubts on the abundance of desolation left in the wake of his failures, and during which he had discovered the barely breathing hope of you and chose, for all the good his choosing had done him before, to not permit that hope to die if he could help it – in the absence of anything else meaningful to him, he fostered a frustrated faith that fate put you in his path for a reason.

Contrary to his interpretation of the rebuff that led to his leaving each day out of respect for your perceived wish for solitude from the angelic sort, and contrary to what you yourself expected to feel at having the cabin to yourself, you found little peace in being left alone.

He returned always in the evening, sometimes with rations of food for meagerly stocked cupboards exhausted by your solitary repast which he placed on the counter knowing, that like a dog conditioned by the cruelty of a master to distrust, you would not dare touch them until he next left.

The woodpile fortified by day, he depleted by night tending the stove when you surrendered to sleep – the practicality of this arrangement between you, of course, existed in entirely unuttered terms.

The last flutter of your lashes shuttered nightly on the scene of his bent and coat-less back several feet from the sofa you’d made up as a bed as he balanced, bare-handed and impervious to burns, another log on fiery coals.

In that realm of relaxed torpor as cognizance fled, awareness of the wakeful vigilance of the angel was a not unwelcome contentment after the day’s loneliness; his persistent, hushed, and unasked for, provisions for your care nourished a growing sense of guilt - a guilt beginning to gnaw at your heart over your contemptuous treatment of him.

Sleep seized you with the thought that he did save you, that he demonstrated goodliness of intention over and over despite his heavenly origins, and perhaps you did judge him too harshly; rest and the stubborn reason of morning, however, refused to relent even an inch of ground to the languid realization.

_Until today_.

Peering through a tall window adjoining the main door, you see the curtain of snow cleared to reveal a veneer of white over a landscape beyond packed dense by a contrast of gnarled black trunks and barren limbs. Filamentous clouds veil a fierce morning light as your attention diverts from the break in weather to the angel laboring at the far point of the post and rail fence encased frontage of yard.

His overcoat and coat neatly lay one on the other over the nearest railing. The smooth polish of a pair of inky leather gloves peek from the pocket of his trousers. In untiring rhythm, thick arms exposed to their elbows by rolled sleeves, muscular shoulders strapped in suspenders test the fortitude of the garment’s seams as he raises an axe upward, felling it again to cleanly cleave wood into pieces small enough in size to feed the stove.

It’s the first time you’ve really looked at him without the pressure of his staring right back in that entreating hue of blue and the ensuing stalemate of silence between you. The intrinsic charm of a steadfastly kind nature notwithstanding, he’s handsome; his vessel, that is; abashed at the charity of such a meditation acquiescing in one’s mind as regards an angel, you remind yourself that’s the human part of him you’re eying. No matter, the ardor of a blush blossoms on your cheeks.

Outside, the hair on Castiel’s nape prickles with the instinctual impression of a shift; his arm jerks, locking awkwardly mid-swing; the axe cleanly misses the trunk centered before him and buries, by virtue of kinetic force, it’s metal bite into the frozen splinter-scattered ground at his boots.

Squinting, seeking out the source of the sudden sensation, he glances backward to the window; the glass is absent your figure, but still glazed by the exhaled heat of your breath.


	5. V

Castiel notices the alteration of a week’s long routine immediately upon entering the cabin; his final armload of tinder teeters when he perceives in his preliminary survey of the space he expects to see you occupying the you-sized void located beside the stove.

Every morning prior you huddled as a human pillow fort there; blanket draping your bulwark frame, despotic frown armoring your aspect, you dwelt near the heat source prepared to catch his eye as soon as he sought for yours to commence his daily plea for armistice to end that siege of silence.

The composure ruffled for a moment by the dread of a renewed isolation returns to the angel in the galvanizing sound of a heartbeat resonant somewhere within; casting his focus backward along the wall, he hones in on the owner of that soothing pulse.

On this morning, you sit at a rustic stout log-legged table constructed from the lacquered cross-section of a hundreds of years old oak not unlike the one you nearly perished under; the rings signifying the tree’s longevity multiply like ripples of a stone tossed in a stream, so tightly stacked as to be indiscernible from infinity itself. Situated beneath a square western facing window, gauzy gingham curtains pinned aside permit both a wash of light and the wintry view an entrance.

You seem lost in the vista; outward gaze unperturbed, your lips purse to cool the coffee raised to them. The dimmed gold diffusion that suffices for a sunrise these days radiates in halo effect around your profile.

Of secondary - albeit curious - concern to the relief he feels in what appears to him to be a positive and heavenly amendment of attitude in a heretofore dourly resigned disposition, a second untouched mug occupies the tabletop. Dwelling out of your easy reach, the significance of the surplus cup puzzles him.

Even more so unnerving to him is the enigma of the chair opposite you shifting suddenly asunder the table; in his distraction, he perceives the movement as occurring seemingly of its own volition rather than relating to the slide of your socked foot inviting him to fill the seat.

“I made you a cup of coffee,” is all you say, outward glance through the glass unbroken.

Balancing the heaped wood long enough to pivot and let it loose in a controlled, but raucous, roll from his arms onto the stack adjacent the door, he mostly manages to stifle the shock subverting his angelically stoic sensibilities over the scene.

When he wheels round, your focus is fixed on him; amusement hints in laugh lines skirting your mouth and a glint of mischief in your gaze.

He doesn’t drink coffee, but he’s astute enough to understand the gesture is more than just a cup of coffee - it’s an olive branch. He brushes off the bits of bark and incorporeal clumsiness clinging to his vessel and crosses the room in a brisk stride.

Sinking onto the seat, spine rigid, he clasps his fingers on the glossy ringed surface in an effort to affect an appearance of relaxation; fidgeting in their ill-feeling fitment, he ultimately relegates the difficulty of the calloused and uncalm digits into his lap and out of your sight.

“Um-” peering into the mirrored surface of the murky brown drink, bright block of window light shimmering your reflection thereon, he recalls the human proclivity for niceties in lieu of satisfying outright an inquisitiveness to know what caused your reconsideration of his charity- “thank you.”

You wince a little at that; the judder of the table undulates your image in his cup. It’s _you_ who should be thanking him. You wouldn’t even have coffee if he hadn’t resupplied the cupboard a few days ago from God knows what resource he found in his wanderings.

All subtle trace of gaiety flees from your features; your chin bobs once under the burden of the guilt-ridden acknowledgement. Bringing the rim of the mug to your mouth, you sip, swallow hard against the throat thickening reminder of your boorish behavior, and permit a sliver of apologetic humility to emerge as a quiet murmur. “It’s the least I could do.”

Following your cue, glad to give one of his hands a useful purpose, he takes a tentative sip from his cup. The heat and acidity of the molecular explosion tickles his vessels tongue. While the impression is by no means a pleasant one, it’s one he bears out by forcing a compact semblance of gratitude into the curvature of his standard pout.

“It’s-” he clears the cough contracting his lungs- “uh-”

“It’s terrible.” You chuckle, allaying his stuttered struggle to maintain diplomacy. “Trust me, the taste improves with cream and couple pumps of cinnamon dolce and vanilla syrup, but even the Starbucks on every corner business model couldn’t survive in the present market climate.”

Your attempt at levity face plants in the slow-motion tilt of Castiel’s head and introspective tapering of his lashes that tell you he doesn’t get that particular reference.

He watches you endure another self-deprecatory gulp of the scalding stuff. “I’ll take your word for it,” he determines, although the doubt deepening his tone insinuates he’s not at all convinced.

No longer able to mince matters of caffeine with those regarding his celestial origin - the elephant in the room trumpeting caution in affront to your humanity - you set your mug and elbows before you to put his intent, once again, to the test.

Intensity shines in your irises as you lean forward on your seat, asking, “What’s really your deal anyway?”

He doesn’t so much as blink those blues at the rapid difference of direction from the realm of the mundane to more mortal concerns. He also misconstrues your meaning by offering a curt correction that, “Deals are for demons.”

You clarify. “I mean, what’s an angel doing patrolling out in the middle of no man’s land?”

The drop of his gaze and slouching of shoulders betray his discomfort, yet no immediate reason springs to his mind to evade providing an honest answer. “It’s a punishment.”

“For what?”

Pain dampens the countenance that rises to resolve on yours. “Pride.”

Your brow quirks, “_Pride_?”

He nods; hesitance to speak aloud for the first time about his past and how much to share stymies his tongue. He runs a broad fingertip along the outline of a blackened ring on the tabletop, relaying the outermost layers of his remorse as he absentmindedly follows the ashy line.

“When I realized angels were purposely abetting the breaking of apocalyptic seals, I rebelled. It was already too late to stop that seizure of power which was set so precipitously in motion, but I thought absolute disaster might be mitigated. Many of my brothers and sisters died because they followed me believing we had a chance to save this world for humanity. We– _I_\- failed. And now-” He averts lashes wetly damned by sorrow to the window and all the barren ‘_and now’_ plainly evidenced beyond it.

You slump backward into the chair, astonished by the unguarded anguish of a being whose species as a whole you lately considered as incapable of feeling genuine emotion. “This … this isn’t what I expected.” The muffled acknowledgement of his outstripping your expectations isn’t one you necessarily meant to utter aloud.

He sniffs against the well of tears he thought long ran dry and looks once more at you. “I don’t think this is what any of us expected.” He judges the confusion contorting your forehead at his restatement as a want of further elucidation rather than his misunderstanding yet again what you’ve said. “That is to say except maybe the Apostle John, but he always was something of a catastrophic thinker. None of us could have guessed the Book of Revelation would prove so, well-” he pauses to exhale a sigh redolent of regret at not heeding the warning- “_prophetic_.”

“I meant you. _You’re_ not _who_ I expected you to be,” you add fuel to the foray of misperceived meanings hovering in the air between you. “That’s a good thing,” you reassure the fret of his brow; a small smile brews on your lips as you raise your cup. “So what happens now? I know you said angels don’t do the whole deal thing, but this seems a little unfair, you taking care of me. What do you get out of it?”

Mimicking the casualness of your sip, he picks up his mug and swirls a mouthful; there’s a subtle sweetness he could grow accustomed to underlying the molecules this time. Adams apple bobbing as the coffee trickles down his gullet, he says, “More of this, I hope.”

“Stale coffee?” you tease; sloshing the grainy dregs around the bottom of your emptied cup, the porcelain emits a hollow thud when you set it on the table.

Tone softened by a sincerity of want toward your continued company, he corrects, “_Conversation_.”

“I think I can do that.” You accept terms that, despite their being undemanding on his part in exchange for his invaluable protection, leave the angel feeling he’s gotten the better end of the bargain.


	6. VI

“What are you doing?”

Castiel’s gruff voice grabs your attention from the task of tightly lacing a pair of men’s hiking boots you dug out of the cabin’s catch-all closet that are not unworkably big, but also not quite a comfy fit, to the querying slant of blues looming above where you’ve plopped yourself unceremoniously in the middle of the floor amid several mismatched moth-eaten woolen socks, also pilfered from the closet and meant to bulk up the smallish size of your feet.

“Going with you.” Shrugging, you look back down without waiting to witness his reaction and yank at the left lace so hard you grunt at the exertion. Sticking out your foot to rotate mid-air, you test the balance of flexibility and firmness of the fit; satisfied, you lash the surplus of lace thrice round your ankle before tying a double knot. 

He says nothing; he doesn’t have to, the weight of silence speaks as to his disapproval of the idea. 

You expected as much which is the reason you waited until the very last moment to spring the plan on him lest he change up his regimental routine in order to sneak off before you could follow.

In the margins of your sight you watch his gloved hands wad into loose fists - a reflexive clutch at some unspoken argument against your joining him on a supply run slipping from his grasp. Supplies you think it only fair you assist in obtaining seeing as, because angels don’t eat, they’re solely for your sustenance.

He knows you fully capable of waging an extended war without words, and that such a skirmish leads to a stalemate. He also knows the hours of daylight are limited, and even for an angelic being and all his advantage of power and advanced perception, traveling the woods by light, rather than night, means less risk of running into obstacles.

Apocalypse, or no, those abominations born of the dark persist in their favor of dark habits much as this particular angel prefers to walk in the light.

He remarks in a slowly cadenced matter-of-fact mutter - not a straight admonishment, but a deeply measured urge for you to reconsider - his opinion on your proposal. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

“Why not?” Without peering up to acknowledge his worry, you shift to work to securing the right lace. You don’t allow time for him to expound, blithely adding, “What? You afraid if you teach me to fish I won’t need you around anymore?”

The bit about being needed strikes him mute, unsteadies the readied retort poised on his tongue regarding the dubious safety of a 15-mile trek through woods into the outskirts of a town whose previous inhabitants were mutilated by wolves of the mutated _‘Were-‘_ kind.

The fact is, he needs _you_, needs the sense purpose you provide, and it’s become clear to him your ability to survive depends less and less on his contributions to domesticity with each passing day. So yeah, a piece of him - the shadow of doubt dimming both the inner radiance of divine grace and his gaze – gives in to a paralytic pause as a terror of losing whatever this is seizes him in stillness.

You glance up to see him go rigid; a twang of guilt tickles your conscience.

You keep forgetting he doesn’t get sarcasm. The other night, while regaling you with the real dung-heavy story behind the _Tower of Babel_, you’d told him, in a fit of disbelief, to _‘Get out!’_ and he actually stood up to leave.

More than forgetting he fails to grasp the often multi-layered nuances of conversation - and more and more - you forget he’s an angel. His divinity exists somewhere separate from his daily kindnesses toward you, how he manages to make you smile without meaning to, and how the cabin feels warmer with him in it in a manner that has nothing at all to do with the timber he fells for the fire; to you, he’s become just _Cas_.

The thought paints your cheeks faintly pink and you swipe the sensation from your skin with a blanching press of your fingertips.

“Relax. It’s a joke, Castiel.” Planting a palm to the pine planks you push to a standing position. “You know, the biblical proverb. ‘_If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.’_”

His blues narrow. “That’s not a proverb.”

“Really?”

He doesn’t deign to respond to your doubt as to his scriptural knowledge. Moving only his eyes, he glances over your shoulder out at the brightening sky beyond the window; its brilliance amplifies in reflection off the fresh blanket of white laid upon the land overnight; the purity of it is deceiving, and time is wasting. “You would be out in the open. _Exposed_. It might not be safe.”

“What I’m hearing is there’s an equal chance then it might be perfectly safe. And how exposed can I be with an angel at my back? I’m going with. If I have to spend one more day staring at these log walls and your frowny face-” _however handsome that pout happens to be,_ your brain embellishes the complaint- “I’m gonna go stir crazy.”

“I don’t frown.” The expression he insists isn’t a frown quavers at the accusation and digs deeper into the lines trenching his mouth.

A snort of laughter flares your nostrils. “Well you don’t smile either. Like, _ever_.” Brushing past him, you grab your coat from the hook mounted beside the door and shove an arm into the Sherpa-lined sleeve. Spinning to see what’s taking him so long to join you at the door, you stop the upsurge of a chortle climbing your throat at the affected smile baring his clamped teeth.

“What-” you cover the smirk fracturing your face with the back of your hand- “what are you doing?”

“Smiling,” he says without wavering from what looks more like a wince than joy.

“Don’t … just, _stop_. You look like you’re in pain.”

Chin cocking sideways, the feint at gladness fades from his features. “You said-”

“Look-” you move a step nearer, extending a reassuring touch and shyly withdrawing before the fingertips make contact with his coat lapels- “a smile is more than a collection of muscle movements - it’s a feeling. You can’t force it, Cas.”

_Cas_.

You catch each other’s stunned regard over the abbreviation of his name hanging in the space between you and quickly avert your eyes.

Your blush renews at the relinquishment of the privately cultivated sentimentality shown in the affectionate shortening whose meaning you haven’t entirely explored in your mind.

He likes the sound of it, soft and sweet like the honeysuckle scent carried on a summer breeze and the gentle buzz of a bee balancing on the petals of a flower to drink of its nectar; he feels the nickname - the familiarity and fondness it bears - twitch and tug at the fibrous set of his frown to loosen some of the gravity of experience sunk there.

Inhaling a shallow breath, you dare to peer up into the bright blue enamel of his eyes, appreciating immediately the tempering effect on him of the endearment you hadn’t meant to speak aloud but which spilled from your lips as naturally as the first rays of the sun splinter the horizon of a new morn. 

You figure, why not wield it to your advantage … just this _once_. “C’mon, Cas.” You stretch the vowel out in a persuasive purr. “We better get going.”

It slackens, too, his resolve against the scheme.

A scream of _‘Stop!’_ pounds dumbly at his perception through the unchangeable span of time into the deafened recesses of remembrance - the desperate warning shouts in his own voice over the wet whine of a drill bit biting into flesh and memory.

He watches through a stained-glass blur of stinging red ooze the vision of the cabin door swinging open and the spin of a bleached world beyond churning you and his heart together out into the void; a groaned plea rumbles his ribs, yet the caution fails to pierce his past awareness.

Tears blend blindingly with the steady steep of blood breaching his lashes.

This is where it all went wrong. This is where he failed. This is where he forfeited himself for a fleeting taste of a happiness meant for humanity alone and put you and every other soul still walking the Earth – souls he swore to protect - in peril.

He shouts again to no avail.

Naomi switches off the drill; she steps back, gratified hum in her throat, to admire her handiwork of emotional excavation. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” She gestures at another angel standing sentinel in the hall of Heaven’s interrogation center. “Return him to his cell. Then inform Michael I’ve found Castiel’s weak point. It won’t be long before he reveals the location of the resistance and we can put them down permanently.”


	7. VII

“Are you kidding me?” The question explodes in a puff of breath on the frozen air; before you unfolds a pristine island of black tarvia, the filtered sun beating down on it with enough heated force to melt the snow anywhere pavement touches. Parking spaces outlined in regular intervals of yellow striping, and a handful of abandoned vehicles, radiate from the mountainous façade of a _Mega-Mart_.

Surveying the scene through the squinted blue optics of his vessel, Cas casts you a curious knotted-brow glance from where stands at the edge of where forest rings this convenient miracle of civilization seemingly constructed in the middle of nowhere. “Is something funny to you?” he asks, looking between you and a building too empty and too quiet for his instincts to trust; out here you’re exposed - a living breathing target unprotected by a buffer zone of wooded isolation – and he doesn’t like it one iota.

“No-” you laugh, further confusing his brow with the conflict inherent between your answer and attitude- “I guess I was expecting a rinky-dink general store fronting a small town main street. Not this-” You gesture at the looming building, a wonderland promising to contain anything and everything your heart could possibly desire and more. More, that is, beyond the surprise solace of sharing a cabin with your very own personal overly protective angel, of course.

“There is a highway not far from here, and a town like you describe – one whose populace was decimated by werewolves and worse. It’s not safe there or _here_,” he says gravely. And yet here you are, allowed to tag along against his better judgement because, in a moment of weakness of reason, he let an inexorably extant and angelically errant emotion of fondness for you overrule his head.

“We should hurry-” haste propels his feet forward; he curls a beckoning arm backward- “Stay close.”

You obey, legs scissoring at a trot to try to keep step with his purposeful stride. On level ground, it’s even more punishing a pace than the hike that hurried you here. Feeling the bite of blisters forming on the boney points of your heels and on the tops of your toes, you make note on your mental shopping list to search for a pair of better fitting boots and Band-Aids.

As you thoughts wander, he begins to outpace you. “Hey, where’s the fire?” you pant across the growing gap of distance.

Gradually getting the gist that not all questions you pose want answering given he observes no indications of a blaze in the immediate vicinity, he ignores the query, but not the subtext of comment on his speed, and slows until you catch up.

Approaching the sliding glass doors of the entrance, he notes they are intact and locked just as he last left them. A scattering of stone spilling outward from the threshold, not so accidental as it appears, lies undisturbed.

Strategically speaking, this would be the easiest egress for an intruder to gain entrance inside. The rear and side admittances are steel, chained, and padlocked. Still, with you to watch over, he does not permit these subtle reassurances to soothe his caution.

A flick of two fingers to focus his grace frees the dead bolt. He pries the doors apart with brute strength just far enough to permit you both to squeeze through. On last look out at the parking lot as he secures the doors shut, his regard is drawn heavenward to the horizon to a solitary silvery vapor streaking the otherwise uniformly tarnished gold glow of the sky – a wisp of airy nothingness so slim as to barely be noticed and the sort of smoky linear disturbance a plane would create in its wake as it passed - a contrail disturbing the pressure of the low atmosphere.

Except there are no planes, and there hasn’t been anything save the bodily bound bombs of angels skimming the firmament in flight - or, like him, falling in a smoldering ruin of fate - since the day Michael donned a crown formed by the flayed flesh and bone and souls of billions of humans and the emptied glory of the thousand and more angels who opposed him and whose snuffed existence stains, in a bloodied shadow of once brilliant light, Castiel’s hands.

In the seconds he spends considering the cloud, it dispels in a freshet of cool wind. It wouldn’t make sense, angels scouting here where there is nothing. They’ve done with him, banished him to dwell in and on his defeat, and ever since he etched a warding sigil upon the curved carriage of your ribs, they cannot so much as sense you exist. 

Besides, with what you’ve told him of the holdouts of human resistance groups, why waste heavenly resources hunting one human in a haystack of the wild when bigger targets persist.

The tear of a candy bar wrapper loudly resonates in the benumbed and stagnant space; the crumpling of plastic and crunch of chocolate crust is swallowed up as eagerly by the silence as your gullet.

“I missed these,” you mumble and moan in immodest taste bud titillating pleasure around a mouthful of melted sugary goodness as his gaze rounds to seek out the source of the sound.

“Shh-” he scolds; the grit of worry in the warning hushes you instantly.

Terror tightens your throat so that you cannot swallow the amalgam of sugar and saliva held amid your teeth and tongue. Heart seizing, then pounding with such ferocity each ferried beat of fear shudders your frame, bits of brown moisture ooze at the trembling corners of your clinched jaw.

In the depths of the store, somewhere down a darkened aisle, winding to reach his celestially superior discernment, a soft scraping of fabric and rubber soles, slightly sticky on the tiled floor despite the feather-lightness of the footsteps, faintly perforates the calm.

Lashes widened in alarm quickly narrow again in a lethality of resolve; an inner luminance of blue burns in his searching gaze as he shifts a few steps into the eerie fringes of where the window light bleeds into the dimness. When he shakes his sleeve, you see a glint of metal flash into his grip.

Adrenaline opens up your veins and, also oiling your muscles to fight or flee from this place, it permits you to thickly and audibly gulp the wad of partially chewed chocolate nougat.

He extends the hand unburdened by a blade out at you, a movement meaning to say that you should do neither and duck out of sight behind the register.

You misread the purely practical physicality of his request and instead cede to the instinctive tug at your emotions to meet his fluttering fingers halfway, meshing yours into the warm sanctuary of their apertures and securing your other arm through the crook of his elbow to flatten his entire weaponless limb to your chest.

To say the action – a clingy suggestion of deeply rooted trust, concern, and consequently of a firm belief in his ability to shield you in the face of danger - catches him off guard would be an understatement.

However, with a hiss of his name in a tone familiar to him as that of his unwaveringly loyal lieutenant and sister – Rachel – slicing through the dark loud enough, even, for you to hear the anger and resentment whetting the knife of feminine voice, he has no time to analyze the exhilarating effect your embrace and corporal nearness exerts upon his being, nor does he permit more than a speck of added anxiety to alter the determination of his affect.

Pivoting, his typically stony rigidity a balletic display of swiftness, grace, and fluid urgency, he covers your mouth, pins you flush against the waist-high wall of the register, and very briefly steals your breath in the press of his hips against yours. The dynamism of his blues, desperately sparking hue dancing less than an inch from your flared lids, implores you to stay there no matter what happens.

He’s certain she heard you - _can_ _hear_ the wild banging of pulse within your body just as clearly as he can – she is, after all, an angel, and a sometime ally sympathetic to humanity who is not as dead as he presumed and evidently has an axe to grind with him.

If you stay out of her way, you may yet survive. Castiel maintains less hope for himself, and before he found you, he would’ve welcomed whatever retribution she required up to and including his life – a life sunken into meaninglessness and seeped in suffering; but now, staring into your eyes, their pleading concern begging him to be careful, to not leave you alone, he feels reason to fight.

Numbed by panic, limbs turning into immovable lead weights of worry for him, you feebly nod against the electrically charged scent of his skin a promise to stay put for his sake and collapse as he pushes you down to your knees and into the alcove underneath.

You watch the lower portion of his legs retreat from your sight and disappear into the gloom. Straining to hear what is happening, the pain pinching your heart in his absence drums dully in your ears and pulls with each strung and stinging beat at the fluid filling the blisters on your feet.


	8. VIII

Elbows plastered to his sides, heat of anxiety pooling in his vessel’s armpits, the fair-haired freckle-skinned fresh-faced boy-next-door wearing wavelength of celestial intent known as Samandriel occupies as little space as possible in Naomi’s sparsely furnished white-washed office.

She’d dubbed him ‘Unfit for field service’ early on in the war after he failed to dispatch a defenseless busload of elementary students he was ordered to eliminate. Considering the alternative was his immediate death, he did not disagree with the designation or his relegation into a dusty corner of Heaven in a reassignment of repentance to monitor the whereabouts of every angel walking the Earth in order to report discrepancies or unusual activity. Not that enough angels actually remained in existence to mount a meaningful uprising against Michael’s reign.

Naomi glances up at the weak-willed angel darkening her door; want of haste and inconvenience sharpens her aspect. She says nothing, and lets an incommoded sigh pass as permission for him to speak.

“It’s Rachel, sir,” he stutters. Castiel’s one-time second in command of the rebellion - an angel of interest allowed to escape for strategic purposes, one Samandriel was tasked with tracking that she might lead them to the last pesky holdouts of humanity - went missing moments ago when her particular wavelength of angel radio ceased broadcasting anything save static.

In the arch of her brow, Naomi owns to a sliver of interest in the matter. “Spit it out Samandriel. I don’t have all eternity.”

“She’s dead.”

“You’re certain?” Naomi stands and straightens the beige blazer hugging her imposing form; a frown - not of loss, but of frustration - afflicts her face as she crosses to a bulletin board and tears at the picture of the fallen angel in question hung beside her former leader from the cork. Rachel was a valuable rook in her chess-like machinations to wipe out mankind, one she invested considerable time and effort into the restructuring and refinement of her motivations.

Cringing at the crumpling of paper balled in his superior’s fists, Samandriel confirms in trembling cadence, “Y-yes, sir.”

Her frown undulates upward in a swell of anger; she swiftly strides in his direction, compelling him to blunder backward and bump the white marble surround of the threshold. “How?” she demands, thumping a finger to his chest.

“I don’t-”

“_How_?” she seethes through a gritted jaw; Michael will mandate for more than a meekly murmured _‘I don’t know’_ in explanation for the setback, and if she needs to separate Samandriel’s spine from his vessel - vertebra by vertebra - to rip every piece of detail out of his being, she won’t hesitate to do so.

“All I know is where-” his throat quivers; he’s thankful for the support of the door-frame keeping him upright- “w-where she went dark – near the wood where Castiel wanders.”

Of course Castiel is involved. They never should have loosed him under the guise of exile, not without a beneficial bit of tinkering to ensure the effect of that isolation Michael wanted. Naomi shoves his shoulder to slip past him into the hall.

He stumbles to regain his footing and watches the stiff sway of her march as she rounds a corner out of his sight.

In her swiftly moving fury, and his shrinking avoidance, she overlooked the signs of something else held back; in truth, he did not say _all_ he knows. He did not say Castiel’s signal had also wavered then shifted, not to the static of a severed transmission, but to a silence suggestive of jamming by sigil.

Like Castiel, Samandriel’s heart, however humbler in chutzpah, beat on the side of right.

* * * * *

The silence and darkness descending in the wake of sounds of scuffle, a shouted exchange, and a scream coinciding with a blinding flash settles upon your shoulders as a weighty shroud of worry. A faint and acrid smolder of burnt flesh and electrical fire permeates the air.

Part of you hugs your knees nearer your chest in a paralytic panic of self-preservation; part of you feels a pull to crawl out of the hidey-hole beneath the cash register so you can find Cas somewhere safe in that enfoldment of dark death to reassure your racing heart that he’s not hurt.

The pounding of your pulse, shallow shaky breaths, and the prospect he is injured, or worse, troubling your thoughts - the only indications of life disquieting an otherwise still atmosphere - distress your senses as the seconds stretch into eternity.

“Cas, please be okay. _Please_.” You close your eyes and pray; the lids clamp tight, overflowing your lashes and wetting your cheeks in a salty deluge of dread. Nothing in this ravaged world - a world where Heaven no longer hears or heeds the pleas of humanity for mercy - could have compelled you to bend your thoughts in prayer; nothing, that is, except a desperate need for an angel’s well-being arising in the soul-centered purity of affectionate attachment.

Weeks ago you would’ve considered the possibility asinine. Insane, even.

Yet here you are, in love with the enemy, your caution plucked like crisp autumn leaves from twisted branches in breezy proofs of good-nature until only the stripped trunk remains, bare and brave and bent to that unremitting element of kindness in him.

A low groan, hardly audible and felt more as a goose bump inducing vibration across skin, accosts you.

“Cas!” Eyes wide, searching the shadows for the source, you scramble into the void. Tripping over Rachel’s inert and empty vessel, you find him, palm pressed to the lower left side of his rib-cage, half-slumped against a shelf of cooking utensils whose contents spill on and around him. You collapse onto your knees at his side and pry at his hand to have a look at the damage.

“Don’t-” he chokes, clutching at your wrist to keep you from seeing- “it’s nothing.”

You ignore his dissuasion; forcing his fingers apart, a shaft of blue-hued brightness streams through the puncture. Faltering in shock at the sight of his heavenly essence mortally gushing from the gap, you flinch back onto your heels.

He resumes putting pressure on the wound.

“Wh-wh-” With a deep breath, you recover enough of your wits to embark on a crash course in angelic first aid- “what can I do?”

He gestures at the blood drenched blade just out of his reach.

You grab the weapon, and mold his limp fingers around it.

He refuses to hold it; blood sputtering from his mouth, he says, “No, you keep it. You need to get somewhere safe. Less exposed.”

“We-” you correct- “_we_ need to get somewhere safe. I’m not going anywhere without you.”

As much as it pains him to put you in further peril, everything he knows about you tells him you mean it and refusing you would require more energy than he can muster at present and even then he’s certain any protest would prove unsuccessful. Gratitude glints in his blues when he rests his weary regard on you. “We,” he agrees.

Looping an arm around his back, assuming as much of his muscular mass as you’re able to bear, you urge him to his feet. Slowly, stopping every few steps to recoup, you make your way to a door marked as the manager’s office.

Propelling the angel ahead of you in a rallied impetus of spent strength, he crumples into a heap inside the opened egress.

Panting from the exertion, you spin around to slam the barrier shut and fasten the deadbolt as if the feeble interlocking of steel and wood could keep out a host of heaven.

When you turn around again, you face a room bathed in bars of daylight sneaking through the slats of the window blinds – a stark contrast to the eerie cavity of black left behind. Squinting attention dipping, vision gradually adjusting to the increased illumination, you watch the wet crimson pads of Castiel’s fingertips fumble to complete the sweeping circle of a blood sigil drawn on the floor.

“Warding,” he rasps when he sees you staring. Enlightenment thus offered, he lists weakly sideways.

Lurching to stop him hitting the floor hard, you brace your fingers at his nape and drop cross-legged beside him to lay his head upon the cushion of your lap. Reinforcing the pressure on his wound with the flattened force of your hand covering his, you peer down into his heavy-lidded countenance. “Angel,” you whisper, smoothing the disheveled chestnut hair from his forehead back into place, “don’t you dare die on me.”

He’s too weak to ask why not, but not weak enough not to be curious - sure, he saved you from the brink of death, healed you with what grace he could spare, but beyond that, and although he personally considers your time together these last few weeks as priceless, he’s no more useful to you than your own stubborn human instinct to survive.

You read the question and doubt in his glossy gaze. Anxiety that you might never get the chance to tell him how you feel, or to explore the boundaries of what could be between you, throttles your heart.

“I need you,” you brush the answer and your lips across the relaxing landscape of his brow as his lashes lower and dreamless restorative sleep sheathes his consciousness.


	9. IX

Castiel watches your gaze eagerly dance along the lettered lines of a novel whose pages lay propped open between your splayed thumb and pinky. You pilfered the mass market paperback - a period piece of erotica with a dashing dark-haired Captain of a fictional army cradling a woman in white adorning the cover - upon retreating from the _Mega-Mart_ two days prior when the angel could once more stand unsupported after the stabbing that leached his power very nearly to the Empty brink of non-existence. Although he was not strong enough to make the journey back to the cabin, he told you he was and did so on a strength of resolve that he needs must in order to get you out of harm’s way because you would not go without him.

Now and then a lightness of amusement catches at the corners of your eyes, creating small creases of joy in its wake, and fueling a warmth of pleasure within his being at seeing you happy. Having read the book himself twice over while you slept – that is to say, particular passages twice for clarity’s sake as regarded the romanticized choreography of certain carnal interludes he found especially inspiring in that he discovered therein a definition for his own nascent desires toward experiencing the same sort of sensual acquaintance with you - he wonders where you’re at in the story, and whether the Captain has boldly proclaimed his love; a love the long-suffering protagonist isn’t sure exists requited, but which he nonetheless dares declare in the wordless longing of a kiss. 

Cas hasn’t asked you what you meant when you said you needed him; and for your part, he speculates that perhaps regretting having said it, you haven’t broached the subject again. At this point, he’s not entirely positive you did say it and that his memory is not merely the result of a muddling of hope emerging in the midst of a disorientating drainage of grace; yet there you were, the anxious blanching of your worry-bitten lips easing into a glad smile when he awoke, waiting as if you did indeed need him.

He knows many words in many languages – all of them, in fact, fluently – but the one language that eludes his angelic understanding is that of love; and so, the quixotic wordlessness of that kiss between the Captain and his lovely lady looms most compelling in an angel’s mind conflicted by doubts yet still tempted to take a tilt at the windmill of a human heart contentedly reading to herself in front of him because, impossible dream or not, he has nothing to left to lose and everything to gain.

The heated constancy of a stare and your slowly stretching smile where it beams at him over the pages of the book rouse him from his ruminations.

Stubble masking the pink-tinted affliction of heat rising up his neck at being caught unawares and more than mildly aroused by the possibilities he so lately pondered, he averts his eyes to the cooled and emptied mug sitting on the table before him.

“What were you thinking about?” you ask; the discomfited dilation of his lashes and pupils combined with the suggestiveness of the passage you were reading pique your curiosity and subconsciously set off a fiery cascade of sparks in other of the more intimately reactive nether regions of your body.

Standing suddenly from the cabin’s small kitchen table, chair legs screeching on the wood plank floor, he deflects his feelings, and the question. “Can I get you another cup?”

“No-” your smile quirks up in confusion, not quite accepting the soft lines of his countenance, relaxed jaw, and unfocused stare amount to him simply deliberating whether or not you’d like more coffee - “thanks.”

He nods and, skirting the table, clears away your finished cups and steps to the counter to dump the dregs of liquid too spoiled by grounds to drink into the drain. Leaning across the basin to reach a rag to use to wipe the remaining wet residue from the bottom, he winces when his wound presses the porcelain.

“Cas!” Dropping the book, you hop to your feet and rush to his side; flattening a palm to his back, you urge him to turn around to regain his wavering balance with the support of the sink.

He concedes to the concerned direction, gripping the ends of the counter for stability until the dizzying shock of pain penetrating to his celestial core passes.

You use the seconds necessary for him to calm the sting of agony to gain access to the area of damage, undoing first his uniform jacket, then fumbling with the shirt beneath before he can summon the effort required to brush off your worries as unfounded.

Pinned between your body and the cupboards, he squirms beneath fingertips attempting to peel asunder his shirt for a look at the healing progress, or lack thereof. “Just hold still. Let me see it,” you scold the fidgeting angel.

“I told you before, it’s fine,” he complains in a grumbling whine, finding your fingers unrelenting despite his defiance.

“Don’t be such a baby.” Your chastisement puffs hotly across his face, effrontery of the insult effectively stilling him as he shoots a lock-jawed glare out the window beyond your shoulder – a glass-paned view lately obstructed by a warding sigil whose red paint drips wet in freshness. You succeed in freeing the final two buttons and loosening the edges of the beige garment where it tucks into his trousers.

Cool air caressing his skin, he sighs in stymied salute to your stubborn nature. “I don’t understand why you insist on checking it every day. Infection isn’t possib-” he sucks in the last syllable with a sharp breath as the warmth of your touch skims across the exposed expanse of tanned torso spanning from the bottom of his ribs and the well-defined V-dip of his hips and up again to the strapping thickness of his mid-abdomen to just left of his belly button where the puncture’s singed fringes appear sealed, but deeply bruised.

A shudder, not derived at all out of agony, but of the opposite - comfort in the bare contact - courses his vessel.

Incorrectly interpreting his shiver as evidence of persistent pain, your smirk of success at overcoming his opposition fades. Fingers lifting to frame his face, you peer anxiously into his damply shining expression, attention flicking to the tremble of his mouth and back up to his gleaming gaze. “You’re not _fine_. It still hurts.”

Wresting at your wrist, unsettling your equilibrium in centrifugal force of spin, he pivots and pinions your spine to the nearest available wall. Several metal cooking utensils hung there jostle and tumble clattering to the floor at your feet. Before you comprehend what’s happening, before the room ceases to revolve, before the surprised squeak of his name escapes your body, his hand is at your throat; feverish regard a blue rimmed blur of lust, calloused fingers curl around your nape, tangle upward into your hair, and cradle your skull to brace you against the impact of a kiss.

Mouth yielding pliantly to the push of his tongue, acquiescent to his fervent explorations, the nimble muscle moves in tandem with your own tasting every nook within reach until a scarcity of oxygen begins to tunnel your vision.

He shifts his bulk backward slightly before you blackout to allow your breathless lungs space to expand. “It will be fine,” he amends his previous assertion, his eyes torn between yours and lips plush and parted by shallow pants.

You swallow the flood of saliva filling your mouth in the wanton absence of his; bobbing your chin weakly, casing your arms about his neck, marveling at where in the Hell, Heaven, or Earth an angel learned to kiss like _that_ and forgetting about the apocalyptic end taking place outside this moment of beginning, you hum, “Mm-hmm,” in agreement as to the uninhibited potential for fineness.


	10. X

Freezing air shrouds your arm creating a cascade of goose pimples across your brine-kissed flesh as you stretch out and search the empty expanse of still warm sheets crumpled in the space beside you.

“Cas?” you call out sleepily into the darkness of the cabin; a faint moonlit glow creeps in from the windows and provides your eyes enough contrast as they adjust to make out the form of the angel futzing with the stove to relight the neglected fire. Only in his absence from the bed, of his naked heat molded to your body between frictional interludes of fiery lovemaking, do you notice the encroaching cold.

Match held tight in his fingertips, he strikes the sulfuric tip upon the box; the concentrated set of his features flares bright. Cupping his hand to protect the match from extinguishing in the swift flick of his wrist, he tosses the spark into the cavernous kindling-stuffed gaping of iron.

Satisfied by the rapid upward leap of flames, he shuts the door and shifts the focus of his blues - ablaze in their own inner flame - to your beckoning figure.

“Come back to bed,” you simper; sitting up, you swaddle your shoulders and bare breasts in the blanket to shield yourself not from the intensity of his gaze, but from a stray draft that shivers up your spine even as his regard ignites your skin in a flush.

Unabashedly nude, thickly toned body impervious to the icy bite of the air, he stands - statuesque in solidity and intent - from where he crouches and casts a frowning look at the depleted stack of wood. “There isn’t enough to keep the fire burning through the night,” he murmurs his concern. There isn’t enough on account of you having spent the better part of the previous night and day and night again engaged in less practical more euphorically inclined expenditures of energy.

“We’ll manage.” Your low laugh does little to penetrate his emerging uneasiness over his pleasure-seeking disregard for your care. “Cas-” the breathy exhalation of his name garners his attention. Soft stretch of a smile denting your cheek, you lull his perpetual penchant for worrying with a reassurance- “the trees will wait ‘til morning. Cuddling with you is plenty warm.”

Swaggering nearer in his stripped glory, the gleam of his blues darken. “Just the cuddling?”

“You never tire, do you?” Reaching out, giggling, fingers encircling his wrist, you yank him under the tent of sheets and blanket and press yourself pliantly into his embrace.

“Of this? Definitely not.” Snuggling you to his torso, christening the top of your tousled hair with a smiling kiss, his stare drifts thoughtfully to the ceiling.

You watch him think, observe the glimmer of irises antic with life, and wait with baited breath for the tiny twitch of his upper lip that tells you he’s decided what it is he wants to say. So near, you can see where the sense of serenity you’ve shared softens some of the hardness of suffering etched into his aspect like tempest floods carving out canyons over a millennia revealing a resplendent rugged beauty in a spring sunrise.

“I find much awe in humanity,” he confesses, angling to look you in the eyes before he continues, his fingers hook your chin to tilt your lips near his, brushing them as he speaks. “I think what amazes me most is that humankind survived as long as they have with such pleasures as this available to them. You are remarkable-”

Cutting him off, an involuntary yawn unlooses itself from your lips; your nose crinkles in self-effacing apology.

He kisses the adorably scrunched protuberance and moves to rest his forehead against yours; amusement lightens his voice. “Remarkable … and _tired_.”

“_Good_ tired,” you correct lest he think you’re tired of him. “Sore and sleepy is all.”

It hadn’t occurred to him his marathon exploration of the thus far limitless bounds of unbridled desire might hurt you. “I could soothe the soreness,” he offers.

“No, I like it,” you quickly decline, preferring the deep ache of spent muscles and blissful numbness of electrically expended nerves to the dull pain of apocalyptic normalcy. “It feels nice. Like echoes of you all over.”

He tenses. “You mean of this vessel’s touch.”

That shoots a pained spike of wakefulness through your brain. That’s not what you meant at all, although you can understand his confusion. Hell, it’s confusing to you as well moment to moment remembering he’s a wavelength of celestial intent crammed into a framework of someone else’s skeleton. You prop up on an elbow to peer into his eyes and place a palm over his heart. “No, I meant of the real you. The angelic being I can’t see. The one I can _feel _when I close my eyes.”

It seems to him with every breath you take, with every beat of your heart, and with every sensitivity of understanding you extend to him, you become more beautiful by the minute.

“Is he in there still?” you ask, curious now that the subject has arisen.

“Jimmy,” Cas supplies the name; sadness dims the shine of his eyes.

“Jimmy,” you mouth the name in a bare whisper.

“Jimmy Novak,” he repeats to complete the surname out of respect for what the man gave him and firmly believing he deserves at least that given how he ill-used him in his failed angelic exploits. “Yes, and no. He used to be there, in the background. I could feel his emotions. Feel how he suffered along with me. When I failed him, failed to keep his family safe as I had promised I would, he seemed to sink somewhere I could no longer hear him. And when I fell from Heaven, when Michael cast me down, I think Jimmy’s soul, whatever was left of him after all that pain and loss, after everything he saw and experienced under my power, I think he stayed there with them.”

“So it _is_ just you.” You dart your fingers ticklishly down along the ridge of his ribcage, tuck your arm across his waist, and lay your head upon his chest. “Once, you were only a part of him, of this body, but now it’s a part of _you_. You consider it a vessel, separate from yourself, but it belongs to you now, Cas.”

“I suppose it does, yes.” He settles his hand across your arm and, stroking your skin, snugs you nearer. Silently, he nurtures the added hope, ‘_And to you if you’ll have me._’

Gaze gliding in the dark to the silhouette of a sigil gilding the window as you slip into slumber, he mistakes a sudden rise of dread drying his throat and pilling the hair of his neck as the simple somatic reaction of his angelic nature to the warded warning against heavenly kind.


End file.
